Dr. E. G. Robinson did not regard the election of the seven, in Acts 6:1-4, as marking the origin of the diaconate, though he thought the diaconate grew out of this election. [pg 918]The Autobiography of C. H. Spurgeon, 3:22, gives an account of the election of “elders” at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. These “elders” were to attend to the spiritual affairs of the church, as the deacons were to attend to the temporal affairs. These “elders” were chosen year by year, while the office of deacon was permanent.
Secondly,—helping the church, by relieving the poor and sick and ministering in an informal way to the church's spiritual needs, and by performing certain external duties connected with the service of the sanctuary.
Since deacons are to be helpers, it is not necessary in all cases that they should be old or rich; in fact, it is better that among the number of deacons the various differences in station, age, wealth, and opinion in the church should be represented. The qualifications for the diaconate mentioned in Acts 6:1-4 and 1 Tim. 3:8-13, are, in substance: wisdom, sympathy, and spirituality. There are advantages in electing deacons, not for life, but for a term of years. While there is no New Testament prescription in this matter, and each church may exercise its option, service for a term of years, with re-election where the office has been well discharged, would at least seem favored by 1 Tim. 3:10—“Let these also first be proved; then let them serve as deacons, if they be blameless”; 13—“For they that have served well as deacons gain to themselves a good standing, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
Expositor's Greek Testament, on Acts 5:6, remarks that those who carried out and buried Ananias are called οἱ νεώτεροι—“the young men”—and in the case of Sapphira they were οἱ νεανίσκοι—meaning the same thing. “Upon the natural distinction between πρεσβύτεροι and νεώτεροι—elders and young men—it may well have been that official duties in the church were afterward based.” Dr. Leonard Bacon thought that the apostles included the whole membership in the “we,” when they said: “It is not fit that we should forsake the word of God, and serve tables.” The deacons, on this interpretation, were chosen to help the whole church in temporal matters.
In Rom. 16:1, 2, we have apparent mention of a deaconess—“I commend unto you Phœbe our sister, who is a servant [marg.: ‘deaconess’] of the church that is at Cenchreæ ... for she herself also hath been a helper of many, and of mine own self.” See also 1 Tim. 3:11—“Women in like manner must be grave, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things”—here Ellicott and Alford claim that the word “women”refers, not to deacons' wives, as our Auth. Vers. had it, but to deaconesses. Dexter, Congregationalism, 69, 132, maintains that the office of deaconess, though it once existed, has passed away, as belonging to a time when men could not, without suspicion, minister to women.
This view that there are temporary offices in the church does not, however, commend itself to us. It is more correct to say that there is yet doubt whether there was such an office as deaconess, even in the early church. Each church has a right in this matter to interpret Scripture for itself, and to act accordingly. An article in the Bap. Quar., 1869:40, denies the existence of any diaconal rank or office, for male or female. Fish, in his Ecclesiology, holds that Stephen was a deacon, but an elder also, and preached as elder, not as deacon,—Acts 6:1-4 being called the institution, not of the diaconate, but of the Christian ministry. The use of the phrase διακονεῖν τραπέζαις, and the distinction between the diaconate and the pastorate subsequently made in the Epistles, seem to refute this interpretation. On the fitness of women for the ministry of religion, see F. P. Cobbe, Peak of Darien, 199-262; F. E. Willard, Women in the Pulpit; B. T. Roberts, Ordaining Women. On the general subject, see Howell, The Deaconship; Williams, The Deaconship; Robinson, N. T. Lexicon, ἀντιλήψις. On the Claims of the Christian Ministry, and on Education for the Ministry, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 269-318, and Christ in Creation, 314-331.